A professor’s outlook on her student’s work can sometimes dull with the daily wear and tear as we grade press releases, critique newsletter design and help future practitioners understand how to properly deploy a survey, among other things.

But there are moments when in a wave it all washes over and one can’t help but marvel at how much these future practitioners can do with a little direction and a lot of creativity and drive.

Using a quantitative content analysis of postings published within an established Kindle community, the researchers looked at items published in the forum over a 2-day period that discussed the CEO’s very direct and unorthodox apology for their misstep.

The scholars classified each post as to whether the post noted the author owned a Kindle (indicated ownership, indicated was not an owner, did not mention ownership) and impact to behavioral intention (said the apology would change behavior, said apology would not change behavior, did not indicate any behavior change based on apology), among other variables.

Mahmoud Arafa, president and creative director, Designframe USA, told us to simplify the message then present it in a way that elicits interest and taps into the “what’s in it for me” motivation. How do you move from belief to action? That doesn’t come with a single tactic. You must combine tactics and approaches.

Even so, remember simplicity. This is a bandwidth issue — the less words the better. Often simple becomes abstract. Move beyond this.

In direct accountability the organization and its stakeholders are accountable to one another, though it is more often looked at in terms of how well the organization serves its stakeholders. An example of direct accountability occur when the organization responds directly to a customer complaint. Today we see high levels of this occurring through technology, such as Southwest Airlines Twitter account where the airline responds to complaints tweeted by delayed or otherwise inconvenience customers.

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